Shetani's Sister

June 1, 2015
The street war between a prostitution ring and the cop determined to take it down turns into a man-to-man fight. When a long-awaited vacation takes Sgt. Russell Rucker away from the streets of LA and his usual routine of busting hos and their respective pimps, he recommends his longtime protege, Leo Crane, to take his spot as leader of the squad in his absence. Unbeknownst to Rucker, Crane has become deeply involved in the drug scene, using the finest coke he can score to escape his otherwise humdrum existence. Crane uses his new power to blackmail snow blonde Petra, the main woman of the dangerous and mentally unstable pimp Master Shetani. In exchange for access to her and a drug stash, Crane agrees to provide Petra with plate numbers for cops on the squad. The result is a surge in prostitution and a dip in busts so low that Rucker is recalled early from his vacation. Rucker is determined to find the man controlling the stable of women on the streets. At the same time, Master Shetani has an obsession of his own. A new woman in his stable reminds him of his dead-too-young sister, Tuta, and he resolves to relive his brotherly role with her. As powers between these characters shift, ancillary adversaries and assistants come and go, typically in violent interchanges. These fatality rates require the final chapters of the saga to add an all-new cast; otherwise, there'd be only two or three characters alive to finish the game of cat and mouse. The latest posthumous publication from Iceberg Slim (Doom Fox, 1998, etc.) may satisfy readers hungry for the gritty street reality of an undefined historical time, but the storyline ends so abruptly that it feels as unfinished as the author's life.

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May 1, 2015
Detective Russell Rucker and his elite LAPD squad have virtually swept the prostitutes from Hollywood's streets, and Rucker is ready for a three week vacation in New York with his lover. At the same time, Master Shetani (Swahili for Satan), New York's top pimp, is planning to move his operations to L.A. He is also aware that Rucker killed his oldest friend, and Shetani wants revenge. Born Robert Beck, author Slim wrote what he knew: he was a pimp, but after several stints in jail, he turned to writing, luridly, about pimps and life on the street. Set in the late 1970s, Shetani's Sister is his last novel; Beck passed away in 1992. In alternating chapters, he establishes Rucker as an honest cop battling alcoholism. Shetani combines violence, heroin, and theatrics to control his prostitutes, and his hatred of women is pathological. Shetani's Sister can be read in 90 minutes. It isn't a great book, but it does have some eyebrow-raising moments; in many ways, Slim is a precursor to many of today's street-lit stars.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2015

In this newly discovered work by the late Iceberg Slim, the man who essentially birthed street lit, an LAPD vice detective intent on sweeping away street prostitution and police corruption finds himself up against Shetani (Swahili for Satan), a leading pimp who uses violence and heroin to control his prostitutes. Note that Justin Gifford's Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim, is coming from Doubleday in August 2015 (see below).

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